School’s Out

by Christophe Dufossé, translated from the French by Shaun Whiteside (Penguin; $14)

At a middle school in Clerval, the teacher of class 9F jumps to his death, in an apparent suicide. Pierre Hoffman, a thirty-two-year-old melancholic literature instructor, is told to take his place and immediately senses something “unsettling” about the students. Gossip reveals that the entire staff is spooked by 9F, but Hoffman, disregarding warnings, is drawn into a series of creepy events. “I had always liked that sensation of being dragged in someone else’s wake,” he says. “A wake as powerful as the one left by the children was a special state of consciousness.” At its heart, the novel is a subtle and disconcerting meditation on the relationship between teachers and students (Dufossé is a former teacher), and, despite digressive subplots, the central mystery—what’s wrong with the students?—enthralls. ♦

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